size has litle to do with it, there are ADC, DAC and op amp chips in tiny packages. how to make it sound good? simply follow the app note for the chips!! it's pretty simple, it might take some tweaking but 10dB/decade drop in terms of a quality audio product is a f-ing joke. IN TERMS OF A PHONE FOR THE MASSES I'm just glad there aren't a bunch of peaks and troughs, this can be EQ'ed out, more or less.jcwillia wrote:i guess here's my question :
how do you make something THAT small sound REALLY good
AND
still have it basically act as a miniature personal computer
AND
sell it for a price where enough people will buy it so you will actually make money?
The problem with demanding a high quality audio out on a device like this is that you would have to pay THROUGH THE NOSE to get it because there aren't enough other people like yourself who would also pay that premium to defray the cost.
(Sorry, putting away the Econ professor soapbox now)
in strict economic terms, saving $0.0001 per device matters when you're making things by the millions. so, Apple just didn't care enough to make it a quality audio product, they just made it work. I wouldn't doubt that they used 10 bit DACs instead of 16 or 24, but I don't know. at least they went all the way up to 20kHz, with voice devices you can cheap out and use 32kHz sample rate and not really notice.